Credits

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Matt Stoller of MyDD has the report from the Senate Commerce Committee Markup session and the debate on the Network Neutrality amendment to the Telecom bill. Stoller has some promising words from our own John Kerry.

John Kerry was the major surprise in the hearings. Ted Stevens was deeply angry about the bill, and said at one point that the net neutrality provision was a poison pill that would prevent the larger telecom reform bill from passing. "If we include net neutrality in the bill, we won't have 60 votes to pass the bill", he said, to which John Kerry responded with something along the lines of "If you don't put net neutrality in the bill, you won't have 60 votes to pass the bill either." Ouch. This was vintage kickass Kerry, the Kerry that showed up for the debates in 2004.

The net neutrality amendment failed on a tie, but it's nice to know that Kerry is fighting in favor of keeping a free and open Internet.